Activating Plugin causes Error 500 – Plugin interface disappears

Hi!
I have been battling on a specific blog on a specific server (1and1.com)

I am trying to activate plugins. Have tried this on WP2.3.3 and now on WP2.5

I reinstalled a new blog, with a bunch of plugins, none of which are on the “bad” list.

I get through activating a bunch of the plugins, and then get an error 500, after which, when I hit “back” or refresh, the plugin Interface disappears. No Menu, no list. Everythin under the Blog Name & (View Site) has vanished.

Hi, while individually these plugins may not cause an issue, obviously a combination of them do. Usually you’ll find that the ones that add in a bunch of javascript are the ones that cause these collision issues. You’ll have to go in and delete out the stuff in your plugins folder on the server to recover, then add them back in a turn them on one at a time and refresh the page until you see the same situation occur, then you’ll start to know which plugins are colliding and causing the issue. Ultimately you’ll need to contact the plugin developers of the plugins that are conflicting and see if they can fix things–or you’ll need to select a different plugin to get the same functionality that then doesn’t cause you to have an issue.

I had the same problem and did find information that suggests web hosts limited some kind of access of php to 8 MB. For WordPress plugins, especially when activating more than one at a time, this can cause problems. They recommended changing the limitation to 16 MB. The site I found said that usually you need to contact the host as you can’t access the server directly.

However, I did number 1 that you mention, and it fixed my problem instantly! What a relief.

Thank you.

Now I’ll go back and do that for all my blogs.

Brian

P.S. In the /wp-admin/ directory, I added a notepad file titled “php.ini” with only the text “memory=20MB” (no quotes)

rock and roll! i thought about php.ini restrictions but hadn’t experimented. i was getting the error 500 in various places in wp-admin and elsewhere (on public pages) on my wp blog and this fixed it. I’m using memory=128mb and wp is quick as a bunny now with no problems. thanks for doing the footwork, peter.